On Not Being Human
by lastincurableromantic
Summary: Graham has some questions for the Doctor. Warning: massive spoilers for Series 12 through Fugitive of the Judoon.


**a/n: Spoilers here, spoilers there, massive spoilers everywhere. **

**Massive, massive spoilers for Series 12 through Fugitive of the Judoon.**

* * *

**On Not Being Human**

Graham, Ryan, and Yaz stood in the control room doorway, watching the Doctor as she stared into the monitor on the console.

"How long has it been this time?" Yaz asked quietly.

"Dunno," Graham answered in a low voice. "I forgot to set the stopwatch on my phone."

"Well, last time it was 45 minutes," Ryan said.

"47 minutes, 23 seconds," Yaz corrected automatically.

"She's been there, just like that, ever since I got here," Graham said. "'S been... at least 5 minutes at any rate."

"You reckon she's still lookin' for the Master?" Ryan asked.

"I dunno. Probably," Graham answered. "Could be more than that though."

"Probably is more," Yaz said. "She's probably looking for Ruth too."

None of them could quite bring themselves to call Ruth the Doctor, not yet at any rate, even though the Doctor had told them that's who Ruth was. To each of them, the Doctor, the proper Doctor, stood in front of them.

Graham glanced over at Yaz and Ryan. As they watched the Doctor continue to stare into the monitor, they had identical looks of concern on their faces, something that was probably reflected on Graham's own as well.

But they couldn't just stand here staring at her all day.

"Don't know about you," Graham said brightly. He clapped his hands together and gave the other two a grin. "But I'm hungry."

"Your turn to make breakfast," Ryan told him. "I did it last time."

"Last time the toast was burned and the instant oatmeal was soupy."

"Not my fault you like it thick enough for a spoon to stand up in it!" Ryan snapped. "And there's something wrong with that toaster. I'd like to see you make proper toast with it."

Yaz turned from staring at the Doc to frowning disapprovingly at the two of them.

"Tell you what, Yaz," said Graham. "You make the breakfast and I'll see if I can tear the Doc away from the monitor long enough to eat something."

Yaz looked back at the Doctor, still frowning.

"Yeah, good plan," she said slowly. "Ryan, you can help. You can... put the water in the electric kettle or something while I make egg sarnies."

After another backward glance at the Doctor, they left, headed for the galley.

Hesitating for another moment, Graham eventually descended the stairs to join the Doctor at the console. She was still hunched over the monitor, the glow from the crystal struts giving her face a golden cast.

"Hey, Doc, egg sarnies for breakfast. And Yaz is makin' them, not me, so they'll even be edible this time."

"Not hungry," she told him, still staring at the screen intently.

He looked at the monitor over her shoulder. As usual, what was on the screen was completely incomprehensible to him. It was currently showing a series of white dots of varying sizes on a black screen. With a flick of the Doctor's finger, the image changed to a series of numbers scrolling so quickly up the screen they were almost unrecognizable as numbers. Another flick, and the screen was covered with sets of complicated interlocking circles and other geometric designs. Then it went back to the white dots again.

"C'mon, Doc, even you need a break. And when was the last time you ate?" When she didn't respond, he frowned at her. "If you don't want a sarnie, there's still some croissants. And we got more of those Coco Shreddies you like. Wouldn't be my first choice, but to each his own."

She took a deep breath and let it out in a huff.

"Maybe I do need a break. My eyes are beginning to cross."

"What is that you're lookin' at?" He gestured at the monitor.

"Star charts. And intergalactic time and space coordinates."

"And the third one?"

"The histories of galaxies and key solar systems and planets in them. Known fixed points. And anything else the TARDIS thinks I need to know about, like time instabilities which could indicate someone is mucking about in the time/space continuum."

"So that last bit, all those circles and triangles and whatnot, that's your language?"

"Yeah." She sank down on one of the glowing steps that led away from the console and rested her elbows on her knees. "For a long time, I thought I was the last one who would ever be able to read it. Turns out I was wrong."

"You're talkin' about the Master."

"Among others."

"You mean Ruth. The woman who says she's you."

"Oh, she is. Believe me, I checked. Down to a microscopic level, she's the Doctor, as much as I am."

"I don't get it. How can she be you?"

"I don't know." She closed her eyes and rubbed her forehead vigorously. "I don't know, I don't know. She has got to be in my past. But I remember my past. I remember every single body I've had, and she wasn't one of them." She groaned, clearly frustrated. "I was so sure…"

"Sure about what?"

"Sure this was the first time I was a woman."

"Yeah, Doc, about that… Can I ask you a question?"

Her whole body stiffened. She took a sideways glance at him.

"What is it?" she asked guardedly.

"'S about this Captain Jack Harkness fellow."

Graham could see the tension drain from the Doctor's body. She smiled.

"What about him?"

"He thought I was you. Gave me a great big kiss when he first saw me."

"He does that. Tell me, Graham, what were your impressions of him?"

"Energetic, like a terrier who drank a pot of espresso. And a bit cheesy, like Ryan and Yaz said. Ryan even called him Captain Cheesecake."

She burst out laughing. "'S not the first time he's been called that."

"See? That right there, that's nice."

She looked at him, puzzled. "What?"

"You laughed. 'S just, I haven't heard a genuine laugh out of you in a while. Not since we met the Master."

She sighed heavily. "He does have that effect on me."

"Can I ask you somethin' else?"

She was immediately on guard again.

"No, I'm not gonna ask you about the Master. You two obviously have a history goin' way back that is none of my business. Although all bets are off if he shows up again."

"Fair enough," she said warily.

"It's just somethin' he said. And that MI-6 bloke. And now this Captain Jack." He looked at her evenly. "The last two thought I was you at first. And the Master flat out said you'd been a man."

"So did I," she reminded him.

"Yeah, well, here's the thing. When you first said it, I didn't believe it, did I? Just thought you were jokin' around or somethin'. But then when the others said the same thing too…"

"You started wondering if it was true."

"Yeah," he admitted.

"Graham, I may not tell you everything, but I've never lied to you. Not intentionally at any rate."

"So that business with Charles Dickens… and Marilyn Monroe… and H G Wells…"

With a slight, apologetic smile, she shrugged.

"And being thousands of years old?"

She shrugged again.

"Oh." His mind raced, to all the outrageous things she'd said that he'd completely dismissed as her just having an odd sense of humor. If she'd been telling the truth all that time, he'd have to completely reevaluate everything he knew about the Universe.

Again.

"Graham, I'm a Time Lord. Although I may look it, I'm not human. And, until recently, I wasn't female either." She tilted her head and looked at him, scrunching her face a bit, like she didn't quite know what to do with him.

At least it wasn't the frown she'd been wearing for what felt like weeks.

Without turning around, she called, "You two might as well come in."

Graham turned around. Ryan and Yaz hesitantly made their way into the console room.

"We didn't mean to eavesdrop," Yaz said uncertainly as she and Ryan descended the stairs to join them. "Just wanted to tell you breakfast was ready."

The Doctor dismissed her statement with a wave of her hand.

"Don't want to have to do this twice," she said. "Might as well get this over with in one go. Now let's just see if she'll cooperate. She doesn't always, and she's been a bit obstinate with me lately."

Graham exchanged puzzled looks with Ryan and Yaz.

The Doctor stood and turned to face them. Eyes tightly shut, she tilted her face to the ceiling with her hands out, as if in supplication.

The room began to darken around them. Dropping her hands, she opened her eyes and grinned.

"I always love this bit," she told them.

Once the room was almost completely black, she was illuminated with a soft glow that seemed to come from nowhere. A ghostly face began to form above her head, an old man with chin-length snow white hair. He looked stern, but then a smile played around his lips, as if he was taking things far less seriously than he initially appeared to.

After a moment, the image was replaced by another, a man with an expressive face, his hair looking like he could be a member of the Beatles.

Image after image appeared in the air above her head. Some of the men were old, others far younger; one appeared to be barely older than Ryan and Yaz.

The last was an older man with a craggy face and grey hair so fluffy it rivaled Einstein's. Like the first, he initially appeared stern, but his eyes twinkled and his mouth held a hint of a grin.

"I don't understand," Yaz said. "Who are they?"

"Me," said the Doctor. "They're all me. All the ones I remember, at any rate." A frown fleetingly crossed her face, and then she continued. "You see, fam, when a Time Lord is about to die, we have a little way of cheating death. Instead of dying, we regenerate. Every single cell in our body explodes with energy, the DNA gets shuffled around, and at the end of it we come out a new person. New looks, new personality, new likes and dislikes. And sometimes, even a new gender. But at the same time, we still have all the memories of who we've been, and in a very real way we're still who we were before. Just with a different casing."

As she spoke, deeply buried memories rose to the surface. She'd told them all this before, Graham realized, when they'd first met. She'd told them she was recovering from having just regenerated, and he vaguely recalled something about her feeling like a stranger to herself. But he hadn't understood a word she'd said, and then in the aftermath of Grace's death he hadn't given it another thought.

He still didn't completely understand it (probably never would, to be honest), but he understood it far better now than he had.

The Doctor tilted her head and smiled at the disembodied face that still floated above her. She pointed at it. "That one, that was me about half an hour before we met."

"Huh," said Ryan. "You said you'd been a grey-haired Scotsman. You weren't kiddin'."

"Nope. Not kidding at all."

A million questions, only partially formed, flooded Graham's mind. Whether Time Lords had other abilities he didn't know about. About how Ruth fit into all this. Who this Jack Harkness character really was and how long the Doctor had known him.

And why Jack had given him such an impressive snog when he'd thought Graham was the Doctor.

But before he could ask any of them, the face over the Doctor disappeared, and the lights turned back on. The Doctor clapped her hands together and grinned.

"Now that that's all taken care of," she said. "Did someone say something about an egg sarnie?"


End file.
